


Croquis

by Flannigan



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Finas past exploration, Fluff, Swearing, brief angsting, cas is excited, drabble out of control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:37:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5648983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flannigan/pseuds/Flannigan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Casimiro returns from an auction with a find he's very keen to show to Finas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Croquis

The door unlocked with a clatter of keys, followed by light footsteps and the closing of the door. Casimiro kicked of his shoes into the wall while he made his way into the living room. He had a brown parcel under his arm when he jumped over the armrest of the sofa and landed on his knees next to Finas. 

"Hey, Fin," he said quickly with a marginally contained wide smile, fingers drumming on the thing he carried. He moved closer until Finas felt compelled to look up, knowing the lengths the other could go to get his attention.

"Hello, Cas," Finas closed the novella when the other man's knees poked into his thigh. He chose to not address the manner he'd sat down and turned to him. "Did you call in the lot you talked about?"

To Finas' surprise Casimiro shook his head but his grin grew wider yet, threatened to split his face in two. 

"I had the impression it was important? Wasn't it part of some debt you owe?" Finas said with a crease between his brows and looked curiously at the parcel. It wasn't small, but not large either. Didn't look heavy. About the size of a thick folder, if he hazarded a guess. 

"Nah, I'll handle it when it becomes an issue,” the tall man said and put his hand over Finas', standing up. ”Come, I want you to see this.” 

Finas got pulled to his feet, the novella fell off his lap and hit the carpet, and Casimiro led him by the hand into the dining room. The dining table was an expensive affair, and entirely concealed by a large embroidered tablecloth, as crisp as the night it was placed there months ago. The table was never used, he and Casimiro weren't the type to sit down and dine, but it seemed wrong to have a dining room without a dining table. At least this they agreed on. Not so much on the rest of the décor.

Casimiro set the parcel down on the table and crossed his arms, made an effort to take a deep breath and slow down. Finas waited beside him, leaning with a hand on the table. 

”Strange question, but bear with me,” Casimiro said and turned to him. Finas raised a brow and nodded. ”Have you ever worked as a model?” 

"...A model?" Finas repeated. 

"Like an artist's model? That they study?”

“You mean a figure model? For anatomy study and croquis?” Finas asked and touched the side of his face to tuck away a few strands of hair behind his ear. They fell back and brushed over his cheek by the time his hand was back on his hip. “I'm familiar with the concept. Why?" 

“You know the kind of stuff that auction usually gets, right? But this time there was a fuckton of historical paintings and things from famous artists,” Casimiro paused and looked at Finas, who nodded for him to continue. Casimiro lightly touched the brown paper package on the table. ”This was a privately owned century-old collection of early apprentice works from a famous artist. Sketches, studies, notes,” Casimiro listed on his fingers.

"Who was it?" 

"Someone English, no one I've ever heard of,” Casimiro said with a shrug and scratched at the paper to grasp the edges of the tape with his nails. 

Finas gave him a look that said 'So why did you buy this?' He had an idea of why, but he judged it too unlikely and put it out of his mind.

”Some of 'em were on display before the bidding,” Casimiro explained on, ”and I had a look.” 

”And they somehow appealed to you?” Finas asked, wishing he would get to the point already and open the thing. 

Casimiro shot him an unsettling knowing look and asked if the name of a university of fine arts and a year rang a bell for him.

They did. Finas looked at the parcel, then at Casimiro. Of bloody course. Leave it to him to find a single damn grain of ancient gold in a riverbed. 

In his time on Earth Finas had travelled, seen and done many things before the Italian and his silver tongue made a space for himself in his life. Money seemed to materialize in his palms. It hadn't been so available to Finas. He'd taken any job offered to him. It was long ago, he barely remembered that time.

"Are you saying that...?” Finas slowly trailed off. Casimiro only gave a stupid smile.

The tape tore off, and Casimiro removed the packaging paper as quick and careful he could. It had been a folder in the package, just like Finas guessed. Casimiro leaned down and opened it, revealing over a hundred protective plastic pockets holding single sheets of yellowed paper. Finas looked over Casimiro's shoulder. 

"Skip, skip, skip, next, next," Casimiro said and flipped through the sheets. Finas' stomach did weird things, but he couldn't figure out why. He put both hands on the table to steady himself. Casimiro stopped with an exclamation, and drew a finger around a figure depicted on the paper. 

"Ah! Tell me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that look familiar?" 

Finas pushed him aside and looked closer. 

"I don't..." he began, then narrowed his eyes. He pushed down the clasp in the spine of the folder that held it together, and removed the single pocket. Depicted was an anatomical study of a standing man with a turned torso, one arm hanging by his side and the other hand placed on the hip. It was drawn with rough lines, with Latin names along the edges and arrows pointing to muscles on the figure. The head was little more than a circle and blocked in features. 

He put it down on the table and picked up the next sheet of paper, ignoring Casimiro's inquisitive look. He tensed up. 

"I think... I remember this," he said as forgotten moments filled his head. Casimiro made a noise, a crude monster of a laugh of glee and joy, and started to flip through the folder again.

"I knew this was you." Casimiro sounded pleased with himself.

"I was just the model, I never saw the results," Finas found himself saying. Casimiro had already recognized him on other studies at the auction, he had no reason to attempt to hide this past career. He wasn't ashamed of it. He simply preferred to be in control of what others knew about him, including Casimiro. He thought he had that right.

Casimiro handed him another sketch, saying it was better.

The figure sat in profile on a box, neck craned to look towards the artist. The bend of the back was especially marked. They hadn't been allowed erasers that particular day, a thought came to him, prompted by the sketch. The facial features had some effort put in. It was defined by a jitter of thin, faded lines. Finas moved the paper closer and looked with narrowed eyes for a long, quiet moment. He understood now what was the cause for the odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Well?” Casimiro said.

He looked up at Casimiro and realized that he'd been watched this whole time. He carefully put away the strange expression he himself didn't know what it was. The already smaller smile on Casimiro's face shrunk further. 

”What's wrong?”

Finas motioned to the paper in his hand. 

"Nothing's wrong. I'm glad to see these, I just,” he stopped, swallowed and tried to formulate his sentences in his head. ”Is this an accura- I mean, I don't completely recall... recall what I..." he pushed away the annoying strands of hair back behind his ear and looked past the sketch, down at the folds of the tablecloth. He didn't continue his sentence.

Casimiro stood in silent confusion next to him, pushing around some sheets of paper on the table. Then he heard a soft gasp and fingers snapping. He felt an arm over his shoulders. 

"Fin, it looks _just_ like you," Casimiro said in a low voice, “I recognized you right away.” Finas only nodded in acceptance and shrugged Casimiro off him. Casimiro said nothing, took away the sketches Finas held and placed yet another one into his hand.

Finas shifted his gaze from the folds to it. This was a portrait. It had been drawn during a break, the professor didn't want them to do portraits, he remembered. He halfly remembered being asked to sit for a portrait by a few students. He had agreed because he liked getting paid. 

He was almost certain he recognized the face looking out from the paper, from somewhere a long time ago... There were stray hairs on the cheek, drawn with sharp lines of graphite over rough paper. This is what he looked like to everyone else? 

Once Finas had became a vampire, it took merely a few years for him to forget his own appearance. It had been both gradual and sudden at the same time. Gradually he forgot, and suddenly he'd realized he didn't know any more. It's not something you'd think you'd forget. But who would memorize their own face? You always had a mirror or reflection. That's what Finas had thought. He didn't now. This time, he memorized it. 

Casimiro suddenly snickered. 

"Finas, you're naked in these ones." 

He snapped out of the grateful thoughts he may have held for Casimiro and pushed his elbow into his ribs.

"For your information those paid better, I needed the money, and they often requested me to work with them."

"I bet they did, just look at that,” Casimiro gestured down at the sketch. “Have you always been this ripped or is that exaggerated?" Casimiro dodged another incoming elbow and silenced his laughter. "I'm joking, Fin! Don't kill me, I'm joking. 'sides, not like I haven't seen any of this before," he held up the paper and smirked sideways at Finas. 

Well, he wasn't wrong. 

Finas only grumbled something at him and set the portrait down on the table. The tablecloth was littered with discarded plastic pockets that Casimiro had gone through to find the ones he'd given Finas. 

"How much did you pay for this?" he asked and looked over them. Casimiro shrugged with a grunt of ignorance and uncaring.

"The price was worth it. I get a picture of you, even if it's a drawing," Casimiro said and Finas looked away with a smile he couldn't quite keep off his face. Casimiro picked up another sketch that was less messy lines and had more skill and practice behind it.

"Hey, this one looks kinda good," he held it out for Finas to see, then folded it in half. 

"You'll damage it-" Finas protested with wide eyes. Casimiro opened up his jacket and put it in an inner pocket. Finas looked at him under stunned silence. That was the same pocket he kept that old coin he flipped all over the place, that coin that he never seemed to want to part with. Casimiro looked with a cocky raised brow at him, and waited for his silence to run out. 

"What are you doing?" Finas asked when it did. 

Casimiro shrugged with a short laugh that bounced off the walls.

"What does it look like?" 

Finas put a hand on the other's chest, curled his fingers around the man's white tie and pulled him closer, pressing his lips to his cheek. 

"It looks like you're secretly a sentimental sap," he whispered.

"Was it a secret?" Casimiro whispered back. Finas hummed as arms wrapped around him and thin, long fingers brushed his hair behind his ear, and it stayed there.

"I suppose not."

**Author's Note:**

> With the sculpted body of a greek god Finas has a responsibility to give himself to the fine arts. 
> 
> Thanks a lot for reading, I would really appreciate feedback if you liked or didn't like it.
> 
> My art/fic tumblr is it-s-blue-ink.tumblr.com


End file.
